It seems, after awhile, the laptop forgets it has a battery, kindof. The battery indicator on the front of the laptop goes out after a random amount of time (from five minutes to three + days), the laptop thinks it's running on AC, but it's really running on the battery. The KDE (and XFCE, etc, etc) battery monitors show the actual battery level as it discharges, says it's charging the battery, but it's not.

This happens on house current, or on inverter current in the truck (I'm an OTR truck driver).

I'd like to use this laptop to control the APRS station in the truck, but with it running out of battery at random intervals, it's a bit unreliable in that regard.

I'm thinking this is either an APM or an ACPI issue, and I'll be the first to admit this is not an area wherein I am an expert. I've been thru the docs, tried a few things, and so on, all to no effect. Shutting off the ACPI and APM daemons does not help.

I should also mention that this very same laptop works fine under windoze, with Toshiba's drivers.

I haven't found anything on Toshiba's site about this particular laptop and Linux.

This is one of the Phoenix BIOS Toshiba Satellites, too, in case that makes a difference.

So my question is this: Does anyone know a way to keep this laptop from forgetting to charge the battery under Linux? How do I fix this problem?

Thanks in advance.

AI8W

15th August 2007, 11:21 PM

Guess I'm alone on this one. Very well. I'll plug at it some more and see what I can come up with..